The Free City of Danzig (German: Freie
Stadt Danzig; Polish: Wolne Miasto
Gdańsk) was a semi-autonomous Baltic Sea port and city-state
that was created on 10 January 1920, against the wishes of the local
population but in accordance with the terms of Part III, Section XI of the
Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The Free City included the city of Danzig
and over two hundred nearby towns, villages, and settlements, all of which
had been a part of the former German Empire. As the League of Nations
decreed, the region was to remain separated from the nation of Germany, as
well as the newly-resurrected nation of Poland. The Free City was not
autonomous; it was under League of Nations "protection" and put
into a binding customs union with Poland. Poland also had other, special
utilization rights towards the city.

In 1919 after
World War I, the eastern part, which had majority of ethnic Poles, came
under Polish rule as the Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship, while the
mostly German-speaking western part remained part of the German Reich as
the Province of Upper Silesia. From 1919-1921 three Silesian Uprisings
occurred among the Polish-speaking populace of Upper Silesia; the Battle
of Annaberg occurred within the region in 1921. In the Upper Silesia
Plebiscite a vote of 60 to 40 percent voted against joining to Poland,
with clear lines dividing Polish and German communities. The exact
border, the maintenance of cross-border railway traffic and other
necessary co-operations as well as equal rights for all inhabitants in
both parts of Upper Silesia were fixed by the German-Polish Accord on
East Silesia, signed in Geneva on May 15, 1922. On June 20 Germany de
facto ceded the eastern parts of Upper Silesia, becoming part of the
Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship of Poland.

The Treaty of
Saint Germain of 1919 ruled that, according to the London Pact, the
southern part of Tyrol had to be ceded to Italy. Italy's border was
pushed northward to the strategically important Alpine water divide,
including present day-South Tyrol with its large German-speaking
majority. The northern part of Tyrol was retained by the First Austrian
Republic.